


self

by fizzyguy



Category: One Piece
Genre: Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Child Abuse, Human Trafficking, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Neglect, Not Beta Read, Old Married Couple, Original Character(s), Slow To Update, Suicide, Treasure Hunting, ill add tags as i go, im sorry, it'll get better I promise, please bear with me, this is rough
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:01:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29153973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fizzyguy/pseuds/fizzyguy
Summary: a self is made up of a lot of things.they had never really gotten much of a chance to make their own, until those pirates showed up.( this is an oc-insert)
Kudos: 3





	1. self-preservation. a prologue

They didn’t have a name; they had learnt from a young age. Wasn’t worth one, they were told. They usually got their attention by spitting insults, idiot, fool, whore, and the like. It was better than what they said before, though. They shudder just thinking about that word leaving their filthy lips. 

They had gotten sick of hearing it after a few years, ignoring it and ignoring it until the women in charge snapped and beat the shit out of them for the ignorance. That just made it funny though, being ignored wasn’t hard to handle at all, so it was amusing to see that it had gotten to them so much. A taste of their own medicine, and all that. 

They must had thought it had taught them a lesson, though, beating them within an inch of their life. The enraged look on their faces when they pretended not to hear the first spit of ‘Boy!’, left them chuckling for weeks. Those women learned their lesson, though, becoming startlingly creative with the words they spat in lieu of a name. 

It was fun, in a way. It had taken them a bit to get used to looking at their life in the most detached way possible, and to hide self-preservation under layers of uncaring and twisted humour. But it was easy to get used to, and even easier to force themself to grin in sick delight at their own injuries and misfortune.

…

They had arrived on the island off a ship at the age of thirteen. The navy ship had docked at the island to restock, and they had snuck off before the soldiers would realize they were there in the first place. The locals had seemed kind, faces of smiles and laughter, hiding a hunger for life born of fear.

People would go missing, they noticed, a few weeks after the ship they had stowed away on had left. Every full moon, a new person would go missing, never to be seen again. The locals whispered of angry gods, the two curious orphans they bunked with whispering of pirates, human traffickers and an elevator shaft leading to hell. 

…

The people got antsy, after a while, hidden under welcoming smiles and normalcy. A new mayor had recently been elected, a fanatical man that yelled of gods and sacrifices and the moon. They were used to whispering, after all. 

He had demanded change within the people, a scheme that planned to dupe the gods. His yells turning to begging after their only doctor had gone missing and his wife died of infection. They need sacrifices, he had cried. Willing sacrifices that had nothing to offer.   
The village agreed once their loved ones had begun dying of treatable illness.

The orphans would be the first to go.

…

A harsh whisper in the dead of night. 

“We have to get out of here,” the voice was small and high. “I can’t- they’re gonna send us first, I know it!”

“We can’t,” a smile. Exchanged glances.

“We’re too noticeable-” they started.

“-But you aren’t.” 

(Cut off protests, choked cries, a packed bag. An empty mattress.

A small, singular rowboat leaving the island. A small, singular boy weeping for friends with no self-preservation.)

…  
Their bed was musty, an old mattress laying atop a mouldy wooden pallet, covered in stains and dust and god knows what else. There was no sheet, not since their roommate had pilfered it to hang himself on the non-functional ceiling fan.

He was nice, they thought. Too nice for a place like this. His smiles too big, until they weren’t anymore, and then replaced with a vacant expression they would see for the last time as they looked up at him after coming home from a run in the morning. It was a tragedy, truly, but boys like him never survived, in the end.

He had left them a note, though. And a map. Who knows how long he had been hiding it under his pillow, after stealing it from under another’s. It was a map of the island, for sure, and right in the centre, deep in the hills that ridged across the middle of the island, an X was marked. What did they look like, a pirate?

A harsh grin had split their face. What an idiot.

The map was hastily folded into a pocket on the inside of their shorts, carefully avoiding the sweaty spots. The note was balled up and then eaten, the taste of dried blood and old paper on their tongue, and then they had gone to let the matrons know of the body still hanging from the ceiling.

The locals whispered of gods. A curious orphan whispered of pirates, human traffickers, a map pilfered from a woman who used boys like they were her favourite toys, and an elevator leading to hell.

…

The moon was full, and they were sent to the highest hill with only the clothes on their back and lingering bruises on their skin.

The ridge in the middle of the island separated it in two. It was only occupied by the desert wolves, the gods, and an old elevator that made noise no one was around to hear. Howls penetrated the air and the moon had glared down at them, mocking, before a fist had slammed into their temple.

(The orphans were to go first. They had no family to miss them. A child was sent first, the foreigner, deathly silent as they left the village, dull lilac hair hiding a rough grin from anxious eyes.   
The scheme was a success. The gods accepted their willingly given sacrifice.)

A rickety elevator resting in the base of a hill rattled down its shaft, a body laid amongst the crates.

An underground labyrinth lay under the coarse dirt of the island of Baris. The locals whispered of gods, the victims whispered of human traffickers, hidden treasure and a man that ruled the underworld. 

…

(A man sat on his throne in a dark room, staring at a screen projected onto a wall. The view of bricked stone corridors flicked on the screen, changing as he pressed a button attached to a large transponder snail. He stopped as he stared at a small lanky figure resting amongst crates at the end of a hall.   
He hummed, the moon was full, after all. They were keeping up well. 

He pressed the button once again, flicking to a bloody free for all of a large group of men at the intersection. Good.  
A wide grin split his face, and his chuckles permeated the silence.

Nothing like some nice evening entertainment.)


	2. one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a beginning to a beginning, i guess.

The dank and musty air was suffocating, filled with dust and blood and distant screams. 

It felt like inhaling smoke, tension so thick, fear so potent, it felt heavy pulling it into their lungs. 

‘The Tunnels’, they called it. A labyrinth underground built of stone bricks and concrete, with passageways extending further than the eye could see, winding and winding and intersecting with one another with no end to it in sight. People were dropped in with or even in crates, huge crates filled with weapons and food and the occasional medical supplies. Sometimes they would send people from the sea, they smelt of sweat and blood and salt, harsh grins on their faces and usually a gun in their hand. Sometimes they sent slaves, shackles at their feet and fear and death in their eyes. Sometimes they sent locals, willing sacrifices meeting a surprising fate. Always, the area would fill with blood and corpses. 

The crates would arrive every full moon, always with at least one new sorry soul in them. It would always get messy, folks from the tunnels, the strong ones and the greedy ones and the stupid ones would all flock, ripping open those crates, sending in the weakest first if they could, in case the one resting inside was thirsting for blood. Fights would break out, and people would take what they could before finding a place to hide. The days after would be a blood bath, more than usual. Folks would be desperate for supplies, hunting down those who might have them. Food was a rarity, and wasn’t often hoarded, too many hungry to be fed by what was provided. 

Things would quiet down again after a while, though, the distant screams less frequent and more chilling. Everyone in the tunnels was a serial killer at best, a cannibalistic maniac at worst, often leaving the scene as quick as their weapon struck true and the victim ransacked. The ones you had to look out for are the ones that don’t leave, considered the vultures. 

The ones that sent people every full moon weren’t fussy, and they took whoever they could get their hands on. Not everyone who was sent down for a reason but being in the labyrinth for any amount of time leads people to cultivate their very worst. Morals were thrown out as soon as you stepped onto those stone floors.  
It was every man for themselves in such a way that teaming up was nothing but a ticking time bomb. All of it just adding more fuel to the fire of tragedy and degeneracy that raged on in the Tunnels.

They would know, they were one of the worst culprits, though not the actual worst. That title had long ago been given to the one that resided in the centre. 

The Minotaur. 

…

The grand line was treacherous and unpredictable, rendering many pirates traumatised and in over their heads. Ordinary navigation was impossible, the conditions in this one part of the world so different from the four Blue Seas that many navigators, pirates and navy alike, were left stumbling for a sense of normalcy that was not going to be found.

The navigator had gotten used to it surprisingly fast, which wasn’t all that surprising once you took into consideration the guy she had made her captain. The log pose showed her where she had to go, but she had to deal with the rest. The weather, the currents, even the goddamn crew was all her responsibility when it came to getting them all to the One Piece in one piece. Not a single other member on this ship had the faintest clue on how to get from point A to point B on these seas aside from maybe a ‘eh, we’ll get there’.

The log pose was the be all and end all on the grand line. Right now, on her wrist it pointed straight ahead. Good. After consulting a few maps strewn haphazardly on her desk, she was confident the island they were heading to was a place called ‘Baris’. All she could hope for is that it wasn’t absolutely crawling with law enforcement. 

“Land!” there was a yell from the crow’s nest. “I see land!”

A cheer swept the deck.

“Straight ahead!” She yelled.

“Straight ahead!” A shout and a whoop escaped her captain, and she watched as he flung himself onto the figurehead, his straw hat held tightly against his head. She could feel his grin from where she stood.

She couldn’t help the snort that escaped her lips. A new adventure awaits at the shores of Baris.

…

Baris was flat, made up of plains and tannish dirt and rocks and low shrubbery. A low mountain range blocked the view of the horizon and the other side of the island, and sea made up the view everywhere else. Houses seemed low and squat, bundled together in small groups dotted over the visible land.  
It was hot, too. Presumably a summer island. Tumbleweeds blew past, pushed by a breeze that was just shy of scalding. 

The island looked kind of boring, the pirates couldn’t help but notice as they anchored at the docks. There seemed to be no navy ships docked, and aside from the fishing boats of presumably the locals, there was only one other pirate ship resting there. It was reasonably large, and a jolly roger with skull and crossbones wearing a beanie and an eyepatch leered down at them from the ship.

The dock was empty, save them, the ships, and one old man who was sitting on the ground with an elbow on his knee and a wrinkled face in his hand. His mouth was stretched in a lecherous grin that only widened when he caught eyes with the captain.

“Pirates, eh?” he asked. “Are you here to cause trouble?” 

He didn’t look like he was waiting for an answer and chuckled to himself like he made some sort of joke. Short spiky hair rested atop his head and an absurdly long axe rested at his back. 

The pirates tensed, preparing for a fight before the captain’s voice penetrated the air quickly filling with tension.

“Oh,” he said, adjusting his straw hat on his head. “Who are you?”

“I’m me, who are you?” The old man replied.

“I’m Monkey D. Luffy, the man who is going to become the King of the Pirates!”

“Oh, okay,” the old guy leant forward and nodded, his grin growing impossibly wide.

“Oi, knock that shit off, you dumbass!” a hoarse voice came from one of the open windows of a nearby house. The head of another old man popped up from it, long grey hair flowing out of the window and tangling in the cactus that had grown on the ground under it. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?!” 

An unholy noise left his throat as he looked down. He reached a long arm out to try and untangle his hair from the cactus. The first old man cackled as he watched the other one struggle with himself.

“Aww, babe. I’m just having fun!” He called.

“Stop fraternising with pirates!” the other man argued, now halfway out of the window and only getting himself more tangled with the cactus. “For Fucks sake- I swear, if you-”

“Oh, I get it now,” the first old man interrupted, lifting his head and slamming a wrinkled fist into his opposite palm. “You want me to fraternise with you instead!”

“Shut up!!” the other man roared, somehow having managed to become fully entangled in the cactus in what looked to be a very painful embrace. His face was bright red, and he glared harshly at his husband still sitting at the docks. “Are you going to help me or what?!”

“Yes, yes, Moss my dear,” he said coolly, turning with a shark-like grin back to the pirates. “Hey, you know, I own a restaurant, and I have a pirates discount if you want to eat there…”

“Whoa, really?!” Luffy asked, leaning forward over the railing of his ship. A shout of ‘like hell you do!’ went ignored from Moss, still tangled in a cactus. “Do you have meat?”

“Uh-huh,” the man said, getting up and moving to walk to his husband continuing his fruitless struggle against the spiky plant. He spared one last glance to the pirates. “Oh, and call me Cacti-san.”

“What the hell?!” the crew whisper-shouted amongst themselves, ignoring the captain watching the couple with a wide grin on his face.

…

The restaurant was nice, cosy and reminiscent of a saloon. It rested at a corner nearby its owners’ house and seemed to exclusively host only the roughest villagers around. There also seemed to be a few wolves, too, for some reason, and they were treated like just another customer by everyone around. 

It was quietly bustling, very few customers as it was just before lunch. Everyone around them ignored the pirates as they came in, not sparing them more than a cursory glance.

It was weird, considering most places were the opposite of hospitable for pirates, but that fact got set aside for the promise of a discounted meal. They seemed to get comfortable fast, and now their captain was sitting on top of the main counter surrounded by piles of meat that he was going through at an alarming pace, and the rest were quietly gathered round a table nearby talking amongst themselves. The long-nosed one kept looking unbelievably nervous and glancing at a wolf sitting nearby every few seconds.

“So,” Cacti said, leaning on the other side of the main counter to peer at the captain. The rest of the crew’s eyes flicked to him at once, before going back to their own conversation. He grinned. “You guys seem pretty fresh; you have a quite a small crew.”

“Oh, yeah, I still need a musician,though,” Luffy said, turning at the navigator’s shout of ‘Like hell we do!’. 

“Pirates sing!” he argued.

“Oh, okay,” Cacti nodded. “What do you think of the Grand Line so far? Interesting, isn’t it?”

The captain nodded. Before he could speak a side-door opened, and Moss walked through, his body covered in band-aids. He made a beeline to his husband, and stood next to him, staring at the pirates with a cold and contemplative look on his face. He opened his mouth.

“What do you guys think of human trafficking?” his voice was quiet, smooth and cool in its baritone.

The crew gawked, noticing that as soon as Moss asked the question, everyone in the restaurant turned to stare at them in interest.

“It’s gross and bad,” Luffy said. “I hate it.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Cacti said, nonplussed, before turning to the crew who nodded cautiously in agreement. “Did you see that other pirate ship at the docks? They’ve been taking people from around the Grand Line and bringing them here, but we can’t find where they put them.”

“Why are you telling us this?” the dark-haired woman asked.

“Robin?” the captain asked.

“Consider it a warning,” Cacti said. “They take pirates and civilians alike, even locals, they aren’t fussy. You should keep an eye on each other, you don’t want to wake up and find that you’re missing one. And outside of this place, you won’t be getting any help.”

“And why is that?” Robin raised an eyebrow.

“The people in the village proper consider it the work of gods, so you won’t be receiving sympathy.”

“I see,” she muttered. “Gods, huh?”

…

The full moon glared down at the pirates, watching as they settled for sleep on their ship. There were two on watch instead of the usual one, the swordsman and the sniper, the crew having heeded Cacti’s warnings. 

“Usopp,” the swordsman called.

The pirate ship that was at the docks before was now gone, and Usopp couldn’t tell whether to be relived or not. Maybe they left the island? Probably not, Moss-san had said that they had only just arrived, and they usually stayed for a couple months at least.   
Maybe they were just running an errand? That wasn’t a comfort, considering they were human traffickers working in the underground.

“Usopp!” the swordsman snapped, yanking him out of his spiralling thoughts. “Pay attention, do you hear that?”

The sounds of a struggle were just loud enough to be heard over the gentle splashing of the sea against their ship. It didn’t seem far, but when Usopp looked through his telescope, he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It was weird.

“Zoro, I can’t see anything,” he muttered. The telescope was pulled out of his hands.

“Let me look,” Zoro said before peering into it. “Damnit, nothing.”

He handed the telescope back and stood, adjusting the swords on his hip.

“W-what are you doing, Zoro?” Usopp stammered. He reached his arm out. “Oi, Zoro-”

“If I’m not back in a few hours, Usopp, raise the alarm,” 

“Wait- Zoro-”

He jumped off the crows-nest and disappeared into the night.

(Ten minutes later, a dark-haired boy ran to Cacti and Moss’s saloon, sobbing, and shoved open the door with a dark green bandana clutched in his fist.)

(And exactly three hours and five minutes after that, Usopp raised the alarm of Zoro’s disappearance.)

The full moon glared down at those below it, all-seeing. It looked too bright and too big for its usual spot amongst the stars. A rickety elevator made noise that no-one was around to hear, and a figure sat amongst crates on his way down to hell.

…

(Do you know the taste of human flesh?) 

The slit on the man’s jugular was gushing out blood and his heart was pumping fast. He was gasping for air, shaking in terror, watching his life flash before his eyes (a sister sharing his smiles, an execution that shook the world, the same sister forever lost at sea, fake fruits and string, fear and tunnels). He was going to die here, with this monster’s lips closed around his neck, drinking up his blood, desperate for nutrients, in the same way a baby suckles at a breast. His energy was draining fast, too fast, he wouldn’t last for more than a few more secon- 

Nothing. The man stills, save for his muscles spasming with remaining energy. His gasping breath stops. His heart stops. Quiet. Except for a- 

Drip.

Drip.

Precious blood was dripping down their chin, the speedy flow now ebbing, allowing them to relax marginally and drink at a slower pace. The man, (a pirate- considering the residual salty smell in his hair and the tattoo of a jolly roger on his exposed shoulder) was getting heavy where he rested atop their palms. He was big, at least double their size, his head resting on one palm, his hip being held up by the other. He was sideways, his knees on the stone floor only barely keeping his weight from toppling onto them.

They wouldn’t be able to drain him completely, getting him hanging upside down would be impossible, with no hooks or tools (save for the blunt axe and the small flexible knife resting in their pack), and nor possessing a large size or strength, they had to settle for this. It would still take a while. The halls around them were empty, no other sound around for about a kilometre both behind and ahead.

After a while, the blood flow stopped entirely, nary a drop entering the waiting mouth pressed against the man’s open neck. With a small grunt, they pushed the man off, letting his corpse hit the ground with a dull thud. They paused, ears craning around for any immediate noise, or Voices, before yanking all of the clothes off the heavy body. Quickly, they pulled a small knife and a jar from the small pack strapped to their torso. 

They moved to the man’s feet, quickly, quickly, hands reaching around the ankle to find the joint before making quiet work of slicing them off one at a time. they would make sure to haphazardly catch the blood that oozed out of each joint in their jar, wasting as little as possible. Hands were next, rinse, repeat. 

They didn’t waste a moment in shoving the body over onto its side, feeling around the back of the neck, making a few slices until they found the last spinal vertebrae connecting to the skull. Slicing, slicing, deeper and deeper with the small knife. Around, under the slack jawbone, removing the head completely. They pulled the mouth open, reaching in and feeling down for the back of the tongue then reaching in and cutting it out, swallowing it with a disgusted gag. 

Next, the eyes. This was always the worst part. With a deep breath, they widened the left eyelid with the left hand, before going in with two fingers of the right hand, shoving them behind the eyeball. Their thumb hooked into the other side of the eye and with a sickening squelch and a snap of the connecting nerves, the eye was pulled out. With a quick slice of the knife, the remaining threads behind the eyeball were cut off. Then, with a quick mutter of ‘down the hatch’, they swallowed the eye whole. 

The same process was repeated with the right eye, while resolutely ignoring the wet slimy feeling of it sliding down their throat.

The axe was pulled out after the skin of the face was removed. With a crack, the blunt blade of the axe split the skull. Grunting with effort, they opened the cracked skull wider, the brain being gingerly pulled out and placed on the ground next to them.

Their axe was useful in its brute force, but their knife was more so, a precious commodity, revered within the economy of the Tunnels. A blade was valuable, in its use and in its silence. And as the small knife slid down from the decapitated neck all the way to the bottom of the pelvis, it was a welcome lack of sound, the tiny knife revelling in its bloodthirst in deathly silence.

Steady hands reached within the cooling corpse, feeling around within the open cut down the torso. The intestines were removed alongside the bladder, piling next to bloody knees and ignored. Next, the liver, and the kidney (the man seemed to only have one- must have donated the other) being pulled out and rested by the brain. Their hands dug and dug and pulled until there was nothing left inside but bones and blood and tendons.

With the man thoroughly gutted, they began to remove the skin, starting at the neck and pulling down, making gentle slices when flesh got caught underneath. The sound was like a wet rip, or a dryer squelch, unmistakeable, familiar, comforting in its promises of a meal.

(The comfort of a guilt of killing a man and eating him, still being human despite their heinous actions. They breathed it in forced it to stain the inside of their lungs, making a promise to change when they were no longer a puppet to the system of the labyrinth. To change when they felt the sun and moon pull at them like tides and banish the vulture that they had become.)

The skin was pulled off like a gross jacket, and low grunts of effort were released as they pulled the corpse’s skin out from under its own weight. It was bloody, by no means clean, dissimilar from the scene in a butcher shop. They grimaced; a butcher would kill them if they saw this hack-job.

The arms and legs were cut off and set aside in a small pile against the wall. The axe was quietly wiped against their tattered black cloak and returned to the pack. The ribs were gently pulled open, and then they got to work, running the knife along bones and through tendons, removing any valuable meat and popping it down their gullet in small pieces as they worked. 

(Organs were often saved for later, easier to carry but no less packed with vital nutrients. It was easier to eat the meat off the bones at the scene rather than carry it all to a secondary location.)

A shuffling and a confused Voice at the end of the hall caught their attention, and so, with blood down their front and a piece of person hanging from their jaws, they turned, and locked eyes with a poor unfortunate soul in a haramaki with three swords of all things on his hip. There was a moment of silence before the person hissed through their teeth and pressed fingers into the white hilt of one of their swords. 

“Oh,” they said, swallowing down the meat in a quick gulp. “You must be new… are you lost?”

“Like hell I am!” their voice was deep and a little rough, painted in denial and offense. Definitely lost, then.

“Oh, okay,” they nodded, lavender hair bobbing around their face. “Are you hungry?”

Their bloody finger pointed to the pile of limbs against the wall nearby. 

“I don’t mind sharing, really.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> howdy, first chapter is up!  
> please let me know what you think, all comments and kudos appreciated <3
> 
> im sick, so ive had a fair bit of time to write lol, and i was super excited to get this out.   
> thanks for reading :D

**Author's Note:**

> howdy ya'll, this is my first longer fic, the first chapter will be out soon :D
> 
> im basically letting this thing write itself, constructive criticism and opinions welcome!  
> please let me know if there is something i need to tag, or if i need to add a trigger warning for anything. thanks! hope you enjoy!


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